4/26/06
Some lady going through our Beanie Babies clearance bin turned around and noticed me when she heard me pushing a cart nearby. "Oh," she said when she noticed me. Then she made a summoning motion and said, "Come here," real irritated-like. I gave her a look like "WTF?" and said, "Ohhhhhkay," and came over to see what she wanted. "Tell me how much these are," she barked, and shoved a couple of them at me with more whining about how they're not marked. Well, they're not marked because asshole collectors of Beanie Babies refuse to buy stuff if their tags have been touched with sticky price tags, so we label them on the bins they're in. I explained it to her and told her I'd get their retail prices and then it would be twenty percent off that because they were clearance items.
"No, it's THIRTY," she snapped, and I told her it was twenty, plus if you have a discount card you get another ten percent off that price. I got her the prices and then we repeated our exchange where she insisted it was thirty percent off that and I told her it was twenty, and then the ten percent comes off that already lowered price. It's not quite thirty. That's why we don't write that it is thirty. She dropped them on the floor (!!!) and told me that she wasn't going to buy them until they were marked down to fifty percent off anyway, and I was like yeah okay sure uh-huh and left.
It's been a long time since I've seen an adult act like such a toddler.
And then I had an amusing interaction with a clueless lady who wanted to pay for her books at Customer Service, and I told her she had to go to the register.
"But isn't THIS the register??"
Huh? Why would I tell you to go elsewhere if that was the case, lady?
"Well then WHERE THE HECK DO I GO???"
I pointed out the really huge red checkout sign.
I really need to get a picture of it so you can see how big it is.
4/25/06
Had a hell of a day trying to help all the people who were calling and coming in. They were just below unmanageable, because one of our coworkers called out, leaving us with one cashier, one customer service person, and one "backup." Which means he was doing backup for both register and customer service. Which means that he was always at one of the places and therefore unavailable to help with the other. Which also means that breaks were pretty much intolerable.
During one of these streaks of busyness, I was helping a dude who was dressed real snappy and doused in a good-smelling cologne, who wanted books on the female apostles. One in particular. I actually found a book to order about her even though I'd never heard of her, and then as I was doing it he started rambling about the woman's place in the church and in a marriage and how she needs to be more an equal partner than just a reproduction partner. I wasn't quite sure, the way he was talking, about whether he was saying something I agreed with or not, because then he seemed like he was saying they SHOULD be submissive in the bedroom and in household affairs even though they're very important, but I couldn't quite tell if that was what he meant.
Then he wanted me to show him some Bibles and while we were over there a man oblivious to the fact that I was helping someone rolled up to me on a motorized wheelchair thing and asked me for a title. I told him I'd help him next but I was already helping someone and he goes, "Oh okay!"
I went back to help my dude who had the matching jacket, slacks, and HAT, and ordered a particular Bible for him. Then I was being called to the register, and I muttered about how I couldn't be everywhere and called the cashier on the phone about what he needed. I told him to call another person because I was already helping like three people. After I hung up my customer said, "Oh, you know you lyin'." Huh? He clarified that I was only helping HIM. I explained that that other dude had asked me a question and his wife was with him. Whatever.
Finally I went to help that man and he was up at the register asking the guy I'd called for backup the same question! I guess he thought "I'll help you next, I'm helping someone else" means "go ask another worker, I'm too busy for you." Argh.
A lady came to the desk in the morning in search of a book I didn't have. She also seemed unsure about whether she even wanted it and seemed to be leaning against ordering it, so I elaborated a little and read her some of the synopsis. "Are you talking to me? What did you say?" she said, and I repeated what I'd said, and she replied, "Okay, I can't hear what you're saying, but I guess you're talking to yourself." I spoke up after that and she heard me, but I don't know what the deal was with that. Most people tend to understand that I'm speaking to them when I speak to them.
Someone asked for books on dance. I took her to Performing Arts and told her we didn't have much on dance at all, and then she specified that she wanted a particular KIND of dance that wasn't even traditional, and finally she told me that she wanted to know if we had any videos on dance. I told her we don't have videos at all. So she goes, "I mean like a tape?" Yeah. No VIDEOtapes either. We do not. do. videos. Just bookies. Toooo badddd!
Someone doing some shopping for a friend told me that she wanted books by a certain author who writes "psychic books and stuff." I found one that the author had written and gave it to her, and then later she came up and wanted me to order another book. She said she thought it was something about the power of nutrition, so I looked it up, and when I asked her who the author was she was like, "Oh, same author." Same author? Well I found a book by this psychic-stuff author about the power of INTUITION--coincidence? Yeah. I told her so and she made a face and said, "I thought it was NUTRITION, but I guess if that's the closest one then get that one." Heh. . . .
I looked up a book for a woman and we didn't carry it. It was on a specific type of dog I'd never even heard of before. She didn't know how to spell it, either, but I found a couple references and when I said we didn't carry it the woman looked all flummoxed and said, "THAT'S strange!" about me not carrying it. Guess what? I don't think it's "strange" that we don't carry a book on a type of dog no one's asked me about in the almost six years since I started here. Yeah.
4/24/06
A woman called and asked me for a school reading list book. I went to get her a copy, and while I was walking to the shelf she asked me if I knew whether the other store had it. Okay . . . if you want to know about the other store, why call me? So I told her I didn't even know yet if WE had it, and had no idea if they did either without checking their shelf. I put one of the books on hold for her, and then she told me that it would be more convenient for her if she could get the book from the other store. At that point she explained that she'd been trying to call them but their phone was busy, and again wanted to know if I thought they'd have it. I just told her we'd save this copy for her and if she wanted to check with THEM and have THEM hold one that was fine but we can't do anything about finding out what the other store has. I think she thought I could get through on a non-busy line through some special process or something. Nope, if their phone lines are both busy then we can't get through either. She called me back later and told me to put the book back on the shelf because the other store had it. 'Kay.
And I had a weird lady in the store. She wandered up and told me she might be getting a book today. I expected her to ask me for a title but then she started rattling off some numbers, like, "I think it's 560? 5 . . . 590? I don't know. I got to call them." I'm like, "Okay, can I help you with something?" and she's like, "I want to get a book if I can get some money out the bank." Then she said more numbers. Finally she told me it was a phone number and she had been trying to remember it. Out loud. And wanted to use my phone, even though she hadn't said so at first. Ohhhkay, lady. So I let her use the phone and she continued to have serious communication problems with the people on the phone. She'd go, "Hi, yes. This such-and-such bank? I'll give you my social security number." And she'd just start rattling it off. Okay, what you do is you call and you say what you want first. But this lady was oblivious and just kept doing that kind of shit. And then she'd stop and be like, "Well I need to see if I can get some money out the bank." Apparently nobody could find her. I am confused about how they're going to get the money to her over the phone anyway, but whatever, maybe that was her weird way of calling about her balance?
After that I didn't see her for a while and then she popped up again and asked if I worked at the store. I came over and she just started rambling about the sale books, asking me what a window treatment was. I told her I thought it was like how to make curtains and stuff. She's like, "Well I don't know how to do that!" and then started doing really weird things like picking up house plan books and asking me if there were plans on how to build houses in there.
A lady was looking for a book that's apparently pretty high on the New York Times bestseller list but it wasn't even in our top ten. So it didn't have a discount. She went on and on about it, how "it SHOULD be at LEAST 30% off" and mentioned the name of another bookstore probably about seven times, about how she's gonna go there and she thinks their bestseller list might be more similar to the NYT list. Our cashier kept trying to lick her ass over it, too--went over and got the book even though she repeatedly told him that she had already seen it and found it and saw it was not discounted. Then he asked me on her behalf if we price match. I'm like come on. The price is the price. Sorry that it's not a bestseller on our list like it is for NYT and whatnot. Sorry to say that it's not up to us, or up to YOU.
At work they've been *ahem* encouraging us to say hello and speak to people more often, so everyone's trying to be social these days. So this couple walked by me and I said hello and they greeted me too, and then a second later they walked past my coworker and she said hello to them too. They walked past both of us and then went on to the desk and started talking to each other incredulously about how they had no one to pitch their question to. Hello.
4/23/06
There's only one minor Asshole today. And it's minor in two ways: It wasn't any huge thing, and it was a kid. My coworker had just called me on the intercom to do a return on her register, and after I came up to help a kid wandered up--he was probably I don't know, eleven or twelve, or maybe older, couldn't tell--and asked if we called him. Turned out his name sounds vaguely similar to mine (though not really), and he thought he was being paged when my coworker paged me!
This has happened one other time, some teenager with the same name as me thought we meant her when I was called. It just always makes me laugh how these people think we're randomly going to page them to the front of the store or whatever. I think you can assume when you hear your (fairly common) name over the intercom that they're probably not talking about you.
4/19/06
A lady who spoke broken English came up to me and told me she was looking for a particular book, but "I do not having the patience to looking for it." All righty then. She held out a piece of paper and told me this was the title and that she even had the ISBN. I took the paper and started typing it in, and as I was doing that she goes, "So, check please, ma'am." What do you think I'm doing anyway? I hit the enter key and up came a list of books, and she goes, "And please tell me that you have." I can't do that, actually, because your book isn't even available. It was a textbook. And it wasn't just a textbook--it was, like, a really obscure subject too. When I told her that she was not happy and tried to dig information out of me about what she should do now. I'm not sure who told her to go to regular retail bookstores to look for obscure textbooks, but she was flabbergasted that we didn't have it and also flabbergasted that I couldn't give her exact directions on a treasure map as to where to dig to find a copy. Word to the wise: If the Internet doesn't help you, you'd better ask your teacher where they're expecting you to get this thing, because nobody in town is gonna have it if you can't even find it on the Internet.
The woman who thinks she's published just because she got a vanity publisher to accept her book came back in to try to promote herself and get a book signing. I'm confused. She left these little cards advertising her book. They're kind of badly written (oh wait surprise!)--they have sort-of mistakes like "book stores everywhere" instead of "bookstores," not to mention that bookstores don't actually stock things if you vanity publish them. She announces that her book is published by "a mainstream publisher!" which means it isn't, and random words are capitalized that shouldn't be. But besides that, she's got her own website misspelled on the card. I noticed that the website listed seemed to be her full name dot com, but her full name was on the card too and they were different, so I made sure when I got home and yeah, that link is no good. It's not going to help promote your book if you have YOUR OWN NAME mistyped on your business card.
Someone rang the customer service bell and as I was going over to help them I noticed that a little kid in the kids' section had heard the bell too, and he was asking his mom where it came from. Neither of them had the slightest idea where that bell sound had come from and began searching the store for its source. I found it amusing to just watch the action (well, after I helped the customer who called me, that is). They actually searched the sale tables and the games fixtures apparently looking for a toy that made a bell noise. Hahahaha. And then they headed for the register, with the boy still babbling about how they "HAD to" find the bell. I figured that since they were going toward the exit they must be leaving, but then they came BACK into the store (the mother still clutching a bag with a purchase in it), and they came straight to the customer service desk while I was on the phone and Mom lifted her kid up so he could ring the bell. "We're just ringing the bell," she said, and then she put him down. He begged to do it again. She said no, just once. But then for some reason she picked him up two MORE times and let him ring the bell obnoxiously. I have to wonder if they asked the cashier about the bell when they got up there, since it seemed so important and they came right for it once they came back from there. It was annoying to me because when someone repeatedly rings the bell it makes other people in the store think that someone isn't getting service--why would they keep ringing if someone was helping them? Argh.
An asshole called me and started babbling about the return policy, but I couldn't understand her very well because her phone was cutting in and out and on top of that she had a way of speaking that made me think perhaps her tongue was too big for her mouth. In any case, I finally got it out of her that she was asking how many days she had to bring a book back. She knew the policy was 30 days, but wanted to know if she could bring it back if she's "done with it" in about two weeks. "DONE with it??" I asked, immediately suspicious. "Yeah, like after I'm finished using it?" she said.
Okay. How to explain this to her so she thinks she can't bring the book back. Of course, people buy books and read them or use them or photocopy the part they need all the time and bring them back. If they look new and there's nothing unreturnable about them (like an opened CD-ROM or a removal of a seal) we generally return them and people lie about their reason for returning. But since this girl didn't seem like she had realized she'd exposed her plot (considering she admitted to the bookstore worker that she was using the book!), I came up with, "Oh, well we don't take back USED books."
She hesitantly asked for clarification--basically still trying to get my blessing to bring it back even though she knows she admitted to using it--and I grudgingly told her that if the book has been purchased and used it's not supposed to be brought back, that we only take books back in new condition. Damn, I should have asked for her name before she left so I could warn the managers that someone is probably going to try something, because I sort of got the idea before she hung up that she was going to just try to use it and not mess it up and then lie about it like everyone else.
This isn't an Asshole, but it was a goofiness on my part. A black customer called asking for books by a black author. She wanted the next book in a series and wasn't sure what it was called, and when I finally pulled it up it had the word "mutha" in it. Spelled like that.
So basically when I saw its title I was afraid that if she heard me, some chirpy little white girl, saying "mutha" on the phone, she would either think it was hilarious or think I was trying to imitate her style or something. But after all, the book didn't say "Mother," it said "Mutha," so I just told her the title and she didn't appear to notice. Guess I shouldn't have worried. :)
A pair of dog enthusiasts with hearing aids approached the desk and asked if I had any books on a particular dog breed. It sounded like they said "Kalahula," and I'd never heard of it but that's not a surprise since I'm not into dogs, so I tried it the best I could think of and came up with nothing. I was forced (argh! sad!) to ask for the spelling--and apparently they didn't know how to spell it either even though they were confident with their first spelling of "C-A-T-A-H-U-A." The second time she spelled it she put an L in it. I found it online as "catahoula." That could have been part of our problem.
But anyway, after I found no books on the breed, they wanted me to try "herding dogs." I found a couple books that mentioned herding but most were specific breeds in the store and the few that were on general herding dogs were only available to order. So in response to my not finding anything, they decided to give me a lecture on the breed and how it became an official breed in 1979 and it was originally from Australia and all this stuff that also doesn't help me find it. They said it was surprising because it was the official state dog of Louisiana. If you say so, guy. "So do you think I could get some information if I write to Louisiana?" he asked.
Write to Louisiana??
I told him I figured the Internet was a better bet than writing to Louisiana, but since I was still messing with the computer I think he thought I was doing something. He answered me with, "So . . . nothing?"
What did he think I was doing? Writing to Louisiana for him??
"Dear Governor of Louisiana. I have two customers here who need information on your state dog. Please send it right away."
Oh, look at this, the Governor just sent over the catahoula training and information brochure and it's coming out of my BUTT right now.
4/18/06
Some guy asked me what time we're open 'til and I told him 11:00 and he said, "At night?" This happened at 11:15 AM. I paused for a moment to see if he'd answer his own question. He didn't. So I said, "Yeah, at night." Then he realized it was a silly question. I've said it before, but #1 if it's past 11 AM and you're calling the store and they're answering, they must mean the other 11, and #2 WHAT KIND OF BACKWARD-ASS STORE WOULD CLOSE AT 11 AM???
A college-age girl--probably late teens--came into the café and managed to order her drink, pay, and leave without getting off her cell phone. Not that that's unusual; it just so happens that her not paying attention to jack shit caused her to not pick up her receipt. Then she noticed the sign by the registers that says you'll get a ten-dollar gift certificate if the cashier forgets to give a receipt.
So she asked for a gift certificate. Instead, my manager went to the café and got her receipt for her. They'd saved it. They do that because assholes are always trying to pull stuff like that--usually they just forget their receipt, but if they don't specifically say "you can throw it away, I don't need it," then they keep it to cover their ass.
Complain we didn't give you a receipt? Well, here you go. Happy now?
She wasn't.
She looked disappointed and said to my manager, "Well, I really could have used a gift certificate."
In other words, "I would rather have the free money, please, even though it's my own damn fault I didn't take my receipt. Please reward me for being oblivious."
She said no. And sent the girl on her way.
We don't know if we've heard the last of that, because later my manager overheard the girl telling someone she was with about the incident. Apparently she didn't sound horrifically angry, but just kinda like "wahh wahh, that sucks, I didn't get my something for nothing even though it says it on a sign." Hey, I want to try that! Next time I'm gonna deliberately leave my receipt and then come back and cry that I wasn't given it. I'd technically be telling the truth, wouldn't I? So where's my free money?
Screw.
A man came up to the customer service desk and told me he doesn't know the name of this book but it came out sometime last year and was some kind of political humor book. Oh yeah, and he didn't know the author either. I told him I sure couldn't think of anything that was bound to be it--translation, I'm not going to waste my time walking over to both Politics and Humor with you so I can pick up every book and say "was this it?" Then he wanted to know if I could do a search for it. Not without any goddamn information! How am I supposed to know which one was "the" one you're thinking of? C'mon now.
We had a teacher come pick up her purchase order and she was really snotty to my coworker. She came back to the desk to pick up her crap and I guess some people think that everyone in the whole store knows how to handle special purchases when in fact only the managers can process them, and she snapped at the girl who gave her the books, saying, "Well I need MORE than that. Just have a manager meet me at the register," and stormed off. And when she was up there she complained about having to sign so many pieces of paper (oh God no!) and demanded help out to her car even though it was a stack of less than two dozen paperback picture books and weighed less than her frigging earrings. When her antics came up in the back room one of the managers said, "Oh, yeah, I hate dealing with her. She's a bitch." I guess there are some people who just walk around wearing a perfume called Eau de Jerk.
A couple was standing at Customer Service but hadn't rung the bell. I came to see what they wanted anyway. When I inquired, the man said, "Checkout!" Figures. I told the dude he couldn't check out at this desk and joked that I guessed we weren't good enough back here to receive a register. He was lighthearted about it but they seemed a bit dismayed when they saw the checkouts were both, you know, more than ten steps away, and so I apologized for them having waited at this desk only to be sent away.
"I think I should get a FREE LIGHTSABER," the man joked; he had been playing with our display Force FX model before I'd come up, I had heard its noises while I was coming. That thing's $150. Heh. I told him that he could TOUCH it for free. He leered at me and said, "I've never had a girl tell me that before, I can touch it for free!" Ewwww. Please, please tell me his wife smacked him for that. . . . I don't know, because I hid under the desk.
A girl called for information on a book, but I couldn't understand her title because every time she tried to emphasize the words (as is TOTALLY UNNECESSARY), it made her phone crackle and become unclear. I had to ask her to repeat the title three times, and the third time she was still emphasizing to the point of distortion but saying enough "oh my God I'm talking to an incompetent person" explanation words that I could figure it out, like telling me "WHITE, like the COLOR." That's a little better than what I heard before, which was "WHFFFVT." I'm sure she thought I was unspeakably incompetent, especially since the only time I had trouble understanding her was when she was saying what she wanted. If you didn't open the interaction assuming I can't pick it out if you speak normally, then this wouldn't have happened. . . .
4/17/06
The only thing I have to add to the Assholes today was a Close Encounter of the Wise Kind. This one was a phone call and I had to answer it.
Mr. Wise called and did his trademark opening, asking if this was the bookstore I just said it was in my phone-answering spiel. Then he asked about a book whose title brought up six separate volumes of itself instead of just one book, and I had issues explaining that to him because this time he was blaming his hearing problem on a bad phone. But he actually wasn't too much of a dick this time--he did do his usual "WELL, do you HAVE IT?" in the middle of my trying to explain that the book he wanted had multiple volumes, but I actually managed to speak clearly and slowly and simply enough for him to get it through his fat head, at which he expressed surprise and then gave up on the book. Then he told me he was looking for these two books by Piers Anthony, but then it turned out they WEREN'T by Piers Anthony--he apologized for giving me wrong information (gasp) and claimed that Piers Anthony was the name of the fella who recommended them to him. I'm not sure about that one. One of the books was about dirty jokes. He said he didn't want it because it was 20 bucks but that maybe he'd take a look at it next time he was in. He specifically told me he didn't want me to put it on hold, but he's done bullshit like this before and then forgotten that he didn't ask to hold it, so after I hung up with him I went ahead and put a copy of the book on hold. I have dealt with him being a jerk too many times for me to let it happen to someone else when he comes stomping up demanding the book he told me not to hold. But so far he hasn't come in. Oh well.
4/16/06
In a perfect world of candy and Pagan fertility symbols (ahem--I mean bunnies and eggs), Easter Sunday would have been devoid of Assholes.
Alas, we do NOT live in a perfect world.
My first day back to work after a nice vacation was at first quite relaxing. All four of us on the morning shift were dropped off instead of driving our own vehicles to work (well, and my ride to work was the only customer in the store for a while and he is cool and parked on the side of the building), so to look at the parking lot it would be easy to imagine we were closed. We celebrated our customer-less morning by behaving like weirdos.
Our morning cashier, having had ten hours of sleep and a bowl of Chinese food for breakfast, ran around the store at full speed yelling, "I'm special!" (He got even worse when I gave him chocolate.) I celebrated the fact that we had a new telephone for the store use by making weird announcements over the P.A. system. And then we found plastic eggs in the kids' section left over from yesterday's Easter Egg hunt, and we promptly ate all the chocolate in them. It was fun.
On to the Assholes, unfortunately.
First of all, I got a lot of phone calls, and almost all of them were people asking if we were open. A good question for Easter Sunday, indeed. But then one of them was a question about whether we sell DVDs, one was a question about a book that turned out to be out of print (and he was one of those people who was flabbergasted and in denial about the possibility of that happening to a book HE liked), and an employee calling for us to order her a book. Whee!
I heard a customer service bell go off and I was in sight of the desk, so when I looked up and walked toward the desk this lady standing there started waving at me, in a not-quite-friendly way, more like, "Hey YOU, hurry up, I'm waiting!" So I got there and she seemed pretty cheerful, and told me she was here to pick up a book and what name it was under. "I see it, right there, on the third shelf!" she exclaimed, pointing, but the name she'd given me was on a bottom shelf, not a third shelf. I looked back at her and she was still grinning and pointing. I think I've mentioned it plenty of times in previous issues, but from the distance customers stand from the shelves, I can't friggin' tell where they're pointing, and no amount of squinting one eye and lining it up helps me see where they're pointing. I asked the lady what her last name was and all of a sudden I was being told to look under M, not D. The cause of the whole dipshit exchange was revealed when I picked up the book and quickly saw that the author's name matched the name she'd given me that she claimed the book was "under." I guess it makes sense in their little minds to file books on hold under who they're by instead of who they're for, but to us that doesn't do any good. . . .
A dude asked me to take him to a section that would have books on nautical knots. I immediately took him to Sports and told him that the first place to look would be Fishing. He stood at the shelf for about 1.5 seconds--and I guess he's a speed-reader because he processed three shelves' worth of books in that time!--and informed me that THIS was not what he wanted because "It's all fly fishing and that kind of junk." Okay. So I took him just a short walk over to the stuff on watersports and showed him the boating books, some of which were ONLY knots. I pulled one of them off the shelf and he goes, "No, not that." I pulled another one that was just knots off and he goes, "No, that's not gonna have what I'm looking for." So I said the only other place that would have knots would be this camping and outdoors section and they are just general knots, not anything about stuff for boating or anything. And he says. . . .
"Well I'm not really looking for knots."
Why the hell did you come up and ASK ME FOR BOOKS ON KNOTS THEN????
Turned out he was looking for more how to prepare lures and stuff for saltwater fishing, and there WERE books like that in the fishing section even though a lot of them were for stuff he didn't want too. I ended up dropping him off in that section and scurrying away, wondering why people use a particular specific word for what they want and then don't actually mean it.
And this was just amusing--a guy called and he didn't sound foreign or anything but it sounded like he asked for "the deli." Deli? In the bookstore? The phone had crackled a little bit so I figured maybe I didn't hear him right, and I asked him to repeat it. "The um . . . the snack area?" he tried again. "The café??" I supplied. "YEAH, the CAFÉ!" Har.
4/8/06
This is the last work log for a week or so because I'm on vacation after today. :)
A guy called today to find out if we had a book, and I told him we didn't carry it. "So you do NOT have it?" he said. "That's right," I said. "Okay, so you do NOT?" he repeated. "That's right," I parroted again. "Okay. I'll check elsewhere . . . if you don't have it?" Blargh! "Thank you, ma'am," he said, and I said, "You're welcome." "What was that?" "You're welcome." "Huh?" "YOU SAID 'THANK YOU.' SO I SAID 'YOU'RE WELCOME.'" "Okay, you take care." Lord.
One of my coworkers led a woman to me who had told him that she needed books for her kid about sex. And she was extremely unhelpful. I had to pick her for information like she was a bale of cotton. Finally I dragged her kid's age and gender out of her and took her to the kids' education section to show her what I had. She said these were too simplistic because her kid needed to know about STDs even though he's only eleven. "I want one with PICTURES," she specified. Pictures of STDs. Sounds like you want a medical book, but no, "for kids." "I was really hoping you had like an education SECTION," she said when I took her to the books for parents who are talking to their kids about sex. I told her that my kids' education section and my family education section WERE an "education section." When I kept picking up books and she vetoed them as "not right" without giving an explanation, I finally asked her what kind of book she was hoping to find and she goes, "Well he's WATCHING PORN. I need something to give him the message. Something graphic."
She went on to tell me that she can't believe what kids are finding out from their friends when they go to school, and if they didn't have to go to SCHOOL they wouldn't learn these things now would they. Disturbed at the idea that she's blaming school because little boys talk about sex, I took her to the teen section as a last resort and tried to find something that's gritty and realistic but easy enough for a kid to read.
I found a couple, and she refused the first one but seemed slightly interested in the second. I found her the chapter that specifically mentioned STDs. In only another moment she said it was "too graphic" and "a little too much." And then she turned to me and said, "Well I was hoping you could just take me to your education SECTION." ::sigh:: I had to explain to her again that we'd already been to what passes for an education section on those particular subjects. I don't know if she thought there was a sex ed library that I for some reason wasn't taking her to. I don't have to be told after taking her to places that don't quite work out that I should really go ahead and take her to the place where they have the kind of books she's looking for. . . .
4/4/06
Okay, how to explain this? I've never quite had a customer like this before.
A woman called. She prefaced her request by explaining to me that she wanted this product but did not know what it was, except that she saw it at our store. She then commenced to describe the box's size to me and told me it wasn't a book, but she didn't know what it was--a kit, or a game, or something. And all she knew about it was that it said somewhere on it that it was "everything your child needs to know" and there are different ones for different ages.
I didn't know what this product was, but besides that she said it was IN my kids' section. I'm really familiar with my kids' section and I don't recognize that, and figured that maybe she was giving me clues that were throwing me off. But then she started explaining to me WHERE in Kids' it was.
I was actually straightening up in the kids' section when she called, so I tried looking where she was talking about, but I couldn't even nail down a location because she kept naming landmarks that do not exist in my section. She said that if you face away from our Favorite Characters wall it's on one of the stand-alone shelves there. We have a Favorite Characters wall and then there are rows of shelves where she's talking about, but she said she thought it was past "the girl section" but wasn't sure if it was past "the boy section." I don't have any section of my store that is divided by gender except for some sexist idea the company came up with for "Boys' Creativity" and "Girls' Creativity" (in which the boys get science stuff and bug experiments while the girls get princesses and stickers). But that wasn't what she was talking about; she said she meant the Favorite Characters wall had a section for boys and a section for girls. It doesn't. It's in alphabetical order by character.
I figured she probably saw a big hunk of pink in the Disney section where all the princess shit is and thought that's a "girl section," but I still didn't know what shelf she was talking about, and truthfully it's hard to find a product based on "this is what it looks like and this is where I think it is IF you didn't move it since I came in." And besides that she wasn't able to tell me how far down it was based on another huge landmark of my store: The train. She said she doesn't even know what the train is. You mean that giant train in the middle of the section that children sit in and watch TV? You didn't see it, but you expect me to be able to follow your mental map of my section and find an indeterminate box of something that I don't even remember seeing?
The problem is, most customers, when realizing they have no information and are grasping at straws, will tell the employee that they will just come in or give up or whatever. This lady, no such thing. She KEPT ON. She said, "Well, is there SOMEBODY I can talk to who can go OVER there and see what I'm talking about?" I told her I WAS over there and I was not understanding her directions because she was naming landmarks I don't have. And she said, "Well all you have to do is go where I'm talking about and you'll see it." Yeah.
Eventually we went around in circles enough times ending with "I still don't have any idea what you're talking about," so she let me go. I still have no fuzzy inkling what I sell that's everything your child needs to know in a box.
Some kid called and asked if we buy Yu-Gi-Oh! cards. When I told him we don't buy crap, we sell it, he started quizzing me about where he can sell his cards. I told him the only place I've heard of that buys cards is this comic store down the road, and after he asked me a few more rude questions without any hint of "please" or "thank you," he hung up without saying goodbye. Ass.
I had a customer at the desk who wanted a book we didn't have. I offered to order it and she agreed, but then she expressed doubt and said she had never been "lucky" with ordering anything from us. I was like, "Lucky??" and she said that she has ordered with us more than once before and has NEVER gotten anything she's ordered. Yeah, because that always happens, we just order shit and it doesn't come. Wait, what? I made sure she wasn't talking about ordering hard-to-find or "availability-not-guaranteed" books, and she said that the first time she ordered she waited and we never called her, but it turned out we "called someone else," that we had gotten her mixed up or something. And that the second time she ordered, we never called at all.
Yeah right. But see, one of my managers is the one who does all the calling, and she's quite competent at what she does. When she sends a book back because no one came to get it, she keys into the computer WHY. So I was actually able to look up and find out this lady's history. She has indeed ordered twice before under her phone number. The first order says that the book was sent back after the customer never came to pick up the book, and the note said that she had actually spoken to the customer (not left a message or anything). Now, if we called someone else and they weren't the one who ordered the book, why would they be like, "Okay, I'll come get it!" or something? And then the second one said that when we called her the customer had told us it was "too late" and she had gotten the book elsewhere.
You're generally not going to be "lucky" ordering books if you never come to pick them up when we call you, lady.
4/3/06
All my Assholes were kind of minor today, so perhaps I am just being too hard on the assholes. I mean, customers.
One lady called me and she was armed with a title and author of a series. Her title brought up nothing except some unrelated children's books, so I asked her for the author. When I typed that author in I got nothing at all--no one with that last name even existed in the system. Usually at this point if a customer is smart they have already figured out why that might be the case--like, they found the reference to the book in an old article, or an exclusive magazine, or saw a reference on TV when it might easily not be available yet or only through their TV offer. But if the customer is like THIS lady, they start trying to figure out why their perfectly good information is not helping me find the book. I explained that there just weren't any book series with that name coming up, just these unrelated books, and then she wanted me to give her more information on the books I was showing even though I'd already told her they weren't by the author she mentioned. When I told her more about them she even told me it couldn't be those because THE BOOKS SHE WANTED WEREN'T CHILDREN'S BOOKS. C'mon. I already said they were kids' books like three times. Ehh, never mind.
A lady was being real flaky asking for help at the register, and I happened to come nearby when she was asking the cashier, so he told her to follow me and I'd help her. I went to the desk and she followed at my heels like she thought I was going to try to lose her, and when it became apparent she was following mindlessly with no realization that I was going into an employees-only area when I stepped into the service desk, I paused at the step up and waited for her to realize she wasn't supposed to go in there. She just stopped right behind me and didn't move to go to her side of the desk like most customers do; just stood there like she didn't understand why I was standing in her path to the computer. I think she thought she was getting taken to a computer where she could look her shit up herself. Heh.
Some dude was asking for a book that's been out all of two months in hardback, and wanted the paperback. I told him I thought it was a little too new for that and he was like, "No, it's out in AUSTRALIA in paperback! And if it's out in paperback THERE, then SURELY it's out in paperback HERE." Nope. Afraid James Patterson did not suddenly start releasing books in paperback two months after they come out in hardcover. I don't know what the deal is in Australia, if they indeed published them in paper and they're just weird about that here, but more than likely he didn't remember correctly. That's usually the problem.
A girl and her mom were looking at these thumb ring book holder things we sell. You put one around your thumb and its little arms hold the book open. They're kinda cool, I have one. But the first one she picked up was apparently too small for the girl's thumb, and her mom commented, "You sure that fits? Oh, you got a small. You need a medium." She then proceeded to pick out a medium and let me ring it up. And then she gave me back the one she didn't want. It was also a medium and labeled just as clearly. I'm not sure what that was about. It was even the same color.
One of my coworkers was helping some older man with a book and the man wanted to rest in a chair while the spry young employees did the work, so he asked if there was a place to sit down. My coworker pointed to the very obvious clump of chairs right next to where they were standing, and he looked surprised and announced, "So THAT'S where you guys moved the chairs to!" Actually they've been there since our remodel two years ago. But as with most things like this, it's a case of the customer misremembering rather than a case of their having not been to our store in two years. Yeah.
Oh, and a funny, I found three college kids playing with the baby trains today while discussing mortality. They said it was "cruel" that kids play with these and they fall off the tracks and kids might realize that people could die in train wrecks. And what's funny is just yesterday I think it was, I overheard some kids talking about this. A little boy asked his dad about whether people could die in a crash on a train and he said yes, and then he said, "What about in a plane?" and Dad said yes again and the kid's like, "How?" and he's like, "If the plane crashes." Jeez. Nice conversation, man.
4/2/06
The only Asshole today was this weird lady, and I didn't even interact with her. First of all, she found our Leap Pad endcap, whose current centerpiece is our last Baby Tad doll. This lady dragged her son over to the doll while telling him she'd found something great to get him for his birthday, and then she activated the doll and it announced, "Hi! I'm Baby Tad! Let's play!" and began to sing. Punch line? The son was a teenager. He was not impressed, and said something like, "That's great Mom," and wandered away. Mom seemed to think she had done something hilarious. But it was not worthy of the Assholes page until a little later.
After a few minutes, the lady dragged her husband over and told him that she had done something amusing to their son. "I told him I'd found something to get him for his birthday, and he FELL FOR IT," she said gleefully, as she showed her husband the doll and activated it again. And then it became clear that for some reason she thought it was particularly amusing because her son's name was Pat, and she thought the doll was saying its name was "Baby Pat." Which yeah in an electronic voice "Tad" sounds a little strange, but besides that it says "Baby Tad" on the box. Now don't ask me why she thought she had pulled some fantastic practical joke by making her son humor her while she showed him something crappy that happened to have his name--or NOT--but this lady obviously thought her little bout of pointlessness was the joke of the century. Even if the frog doll thing's name had been "Baby Pat" I don't see what would have been so damn funny, and apparently even her family didn't see what all the fuss was about because neither of them even smiled. At least it wasn't a whole jackass family guffawing together. I don't know if I could have handled that.
4/1/06
Yes, I played some good April Fool's Day gags, but I'll tell you about those in a minute. Unfortunately, the people who were unlucky enough to get on this page today weren't fooling in the least.
One lady couldn't find a book despite being convinced that she had gone to the right place, so I looked it up and took her where we needed to go. "But I was JUST THERE!" she protested when I found her book in a heartbeat. Well, I don't care. Either you're mistaken and you WEREN'T just here, or you WERE just here and you didn't see the damn thing. Regardless of which it was, it isn't my fault. It's not like I had to go to the desk and press a special button to make the book become visible.
I heard the customer service bell at the desk, so I went up and found an older teenage boy there waiting expectantly. I asked whether I could help him and he said yeah and gave me his title. I looked at the computer and went to look it up, but stopped when I saw that the title he was asking for was already on the screen. That's a little weird, that someone would have just looked up exactly what he was looking for. So I started to take him over to where he needed to be, listening to his protests about how he already looked where it should have been and it wasn't there, assuming he probably just didn't realize that the hardbacks and large-size paperbacks are at the beginning of the section because they don't fit on the regular shelves. And as I was taking him there I noticed that one of my coworkers was browsing the same shelf I was going toward.
Um, yeah.
The story goes like this: This kid had already asked my coworker for help, which explains why the computer had his book on the screen already. But for no apparent reason, the kid had wandered away WHILE SHE WAS HELPING HIM, rang the bell, and talked to me about it like he wasn't already getting help from someone else. Neither of us were able to piece together what my associate might have done to make this kid think he needed to solicit someone else to help him, but in any case we damn well found his damn book.
I went up to the desk to get a piece of paper or something and behind me an associate was helping a customer on the phone while beside me my manager was calling people on the other phone to let people know their books were in. While I was up there a woman wandered up to the desk and stood in front of my manager kind of looking at him, and I figured she needed help so I said "Hi" to her just in case she hadn't seen me. She turned to me and said hi back, but then turned away like she didn't want to talk to me, and moved so she was just kind of standing there between me and my manager like she was waiting for something. Then she just kept standing and looking frustrated like she was waiting for someone to ask her what she needed. I'm not sure why she didn't ask me since I'm the one who spoke to her, but maybe she's one of those people who's put off by how I look and thinks perhaps she needs to speak to an adult, someone who actually knows what they're doing, rather than this little blonde pigtailed child who for some reason is wearing the store's apron. When I asked her if she needed help with something she acted like that was a pointless question and finally started giving me her information. Don't know what her fucking problem was.
The month of March was a promotion at our store for the Dummies books, and the deal was that you'd get five bucks off any book from that series right there at the store, and then you could pick up this coupon for another five bucks off through the mail-in rebate from the publishing company. Well, the rules on the thing said you had to have a receipt from the store dated in the month of March, and since today's April 1 that's not gonna work anymore, although for some reason the five bucks is still programmed into the register to come off the books bought in the store. Well, a lady noticed that in one place in the café the Dummies promotional materials were still up, and started squirting her attitude of entitlement all over everyone, screeching about how we should not have this coupon up if the deal for the rebate is no longer valid. She told my manager she was going "get legal on us" and sue us for false advertising if he did not give her five dollars right then and there at the store, since obviously the Dummies company wouldn't be able to give it to her if her receipt was dated April 1. I guess someone forgot to take down all of the coupons in the store, but I still don't see how that's "false advertising" if the terms are right on the sheet and it's not even us who's doing the deal. *We* were still obviously doing a promotion since her book automatically rang up five bucks less, so right there she got something for nothing. But my manager ended up having to go do a freaking paid out and give this asshole money. Yeah right as if she would have sued the store over five bucks. Give me a break. I hope that in this lady's next something-for-nothing scheme, she screws up her slip-and-fall artistry and actually breaks something. People who act like everyone owes them shit make me sick.
And I swear this was almost as funny as an April Fool's joke except it totally was for real.
This couple came up and one of them rang the bell, so I started going toward the desk. I was already close enough to see them when they rang the bell so I saw everything from that point on after the bell was rung. As soon as the noise sounded, the man left the desk and started kind of circling it like a hawk, and the woman walked further away like she was desperately searching for something or someone. And then she found the opening to the desk and STARTED TO GO INTO IT. I reached the opening just as she had one foot up into the employees-only area and I was like, "UM CAN I HELP YOU HUH???"
The lady revealed that she was just planning to go grab that phone book she could see under our counter. Yeah, you can borrow our phone book. From the way they mobilized like ants after they'd pushed the summoning bell, I thought they must be in a hurry. Obviously not so. After they found their number they asked if they could use the phone too, so I let them. And then the woman proceeded to have a conversation with the person on the other end for a full TWENTY MINUTES.
I stayed at the desk, drank a coffee, and doodled a picture on scratch paper while I listened to this bizarreness. Apparently the lady and husband were coming through town and had a friend who lived in the area, and they had called the friend at her place of business to see if they might drop by and catch-up. It was not a good day for the friend to have visitors, so they elected to play catch-up on my business phone. Um yeah. And this lady went on and on about how some relative of hers had surgery and described his scars for the friend, and talked about a college-age daughter or something, and then started discussing a grandmother and something about when the hurricanes came through. What's funny is the husband was at her side listening intently and randomly suggesting things to add or correcting her. "Oh yes, and then she walked right out of the house while I was using the bathroom, and she fell and broke her hip or something." "No, it was her right femur." "Right femur!" Yyyyeah.
So after that went on a while finally the lady hung up and then they used the phone AGAIN but this time they just talked to an answering machine. They thanked me for letting them use the phone and began to wander off, but then they came back and the woman tossed something on the counter at me. "I'll give you something to read," she said, and of course, it was a religious tract. For some reason people always give those to you and then run like hell. These guys were no exception.
This particular tract was not normal, either. It wasn't well-written--I caught two typos on its front page--and besides that it was a small stapled booklet that was THIRTY-TWO PAGES LONG. On the inside front cover it had a little fake birth certificate with short little lines for you to I guess write your name, announcing that you have been reborn as a child of God. Oh yay, a little Cabbage Patch-sized Jesus certificate! It had all these hilarious line drawings in it too. Definitely a keeper.
Oh, and we had a Wise Alert. I almost thought it was an April Fool's gag when one of my coworkers called me on the portable phone and said, "Wise Alert!!! He's in the store!" I was like oh my shit. And ran for the back room to go cower. Until another coworker and I got curious about who Wise might be attacking and crept out of the back to see that one of our managers was handling him.
Apparently he was fairly pleasant this time though. However, I was told that he called yesterday and cussed out one of our employees, and was typically uncooperative in giving the information, so she ended up putting a book with the same title but the wrong author on hold for him. We didn't have the one he actually wanted but our manager ordered it for him, and he was pleasant. We've decided that he's pretty much mostly been a complete bastard only to women. And considering some of the stuff he's ordered, we assume he's probably a woman-hater. That's backed up by the fact that when he got in line at the register today, we had a girl cashier and a guy cashier, and he was in the girl's line but when he spotted the guy he got in his line.
Mr. Wise only likes men. Hahahaha.
If he ever cusses at me, I will tell him if he can't find a more appropriate way to express himself I won't help him.
Or maybe I'll tell him to fuck off and die? That might work too.
Anyway, April Fool's jokes . . . I brought a couple props to work today. One was a spoon with melted ice cream on it. We actually have ice cream in our freezer for community consumption, so my placing it on top of the top box of ice cream made a couple people get grossed out. Hahaha. They both figured out it was a joke though because they were both determined to get ice cream so they tried to move the box and noticed it was fake.
And I also put fake vomit in one of the kid areas of the store. What was hilarious is that I had a customer alert me to its presence, and her first statement was "Hi. WE JUST GOT HERE!!!! But we noticed there's a mess. . . . " Heh, she was more concerned with making sure I knew WE DIDN'T DO IT!!! than she was with letting me know there was a mess. I picked it up and waggled it at her and said, "April Fool's!!" Heh. Later it grossed out some kids. I heard a brother and sister arguing about whether it was real and whether the brother had made the mess. The sister was really freaked by it. The brother picked it up and threw it in the aisle. I found it there and placed it somewhere else on the floor, and later on a table. I found it on a book cart at the end of the day. Who knows who it grossed out during the day? Hahaha.
Backlinks:
MAIN PAGE
WRITING PAGE
JOURNALS PAGE
WORK LOG PAGE